Devoxx France. Wild Success!

April 25, 2012 Comments Off

I’ve been on the job for less than a month and so far I seem to be experiencing the “and suddenly everything accelerates” sentiment.

Part of the acceleration was the Devoxx conference for the first time in Paris after 10 yearly occurrences in Antwerp. It was my first time attending such a major developer conference in my home town and I took pride in having had the same shitty weather as in Belgium in November ;)

Joking aside, this 1200-participant event was a success by many metrics, not only was it sold out, but I believe it had the right level of content with labs, university sessions, inspiring keynotes (ok, not all of them), regular sessions, and of course socializing.

I’ve spent most of my time at the conference catching up with friends, meeting many new faces (quick, someone, give me glasses with face recognition!) and explaining my responsibilities in the new job.

Kudos to my colleague Martin Görner who had driven the project on the Google side for many weeks now. Speaking of Martin, you can look at his G+ page to see how active the Google booth was with PAUG and Paris GTUG-selected developer demos. Developers talking to developers!

On a somewhat more personal note, it felt great to see Ludo again (now working on AppEngine) as well as Romain Guy, Android Diva (in a good sense!). Meeting new colleagues (Petra, Nicolas, and others) was another highlight.

Devoxx is turning out to be a wild success across Europe. Can’t wait to spread more Google Developer love in future events!